A High Intrinsic Peculiarity Rate among Type Ia Supernovae

By Weidong Li, A. Filippenko, R. Treffers, A. Riess, Jing-yao Hu, Y. Qiu. 2000

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have compiled a sample of 45 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) discovered by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS) and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory Supernova Survey (BAOSS), and determined the rate of spectroscopically peculiar SNe Ia (i.e., SN 1986G-like, SN 1991bg-like, and SN 1991T-like objects) and the luminosity function of SNe Ia. Because of the nature of the two surveys (distance-limited with small baselines and deep limiting magnitudes), nearly all SNe Ia have been discovered in the sample galaxies of LOSS and BAOSS; thus, the observed peculiarity rate and luminosity function of SNe Ia are intrinsic. We find that 36% ± 9% of nearby SNe Ia are peculiar; specifically, the luminosity function of SNe Ia consists of 20% SN 1991T-like, 64% normal, and 16% SN 1991bg-like objects. We have compared our results to those found by earlier studies, and to those found at high redshift. The apparent dearth of SN 1991T-like objects at high redshift may be due to extinction, and especially to the difficulty of recognizing them from spectra obtained past maximum brightness or from spectra with low signal-to-noise ratios. Implications of the high peculiarity rate for the progenitor systems of SNe Ia are also briefly discussed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c25d2a133d54e4a9b66b5906f4ac4e4df1bcd334

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Citations in the corpus

Optical and Infrared Spectroscopy of SN 1999ee and SN 1999ex (2002, methodology): “5 of Li et al. 2001b), SN 1991T was a much more extreme event, in the sense that the premaximum spectrum did not display the Ca ii H and K 3934, 3968 blend shown by Branch-normal SNe and also because it remained spectroscopically distinct several days after maximum (Phillips et al. 1992).”
TYPE Iax SUPERNOVAE: A NEW CLASS OF STELLAR EXPLOSION (2012, background): “…et al. 1992b; Phillips et al. 1992) and SN 1991bg (Filippenko et al. 1992a; Leibundgut et al. 1993), respectively, as well as the unique SN 2000cx (Li et al. 2001a), SNe similar to SN 2006bt (Foley et al. 2010b), SN 2010X (Kasliwal et al. 2010), and ultraluminous SNe I (e.g., Pastorello et al.…”
OPTICAL SPECTRA OF 73 STRIPPED-ENVELOPE CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE (2014, background): “Thus, they include well-known and, inevitably, more luminous galaxies (e.g., Li et al. 2001; Gallagher et al. 2005; Mannucci et al. 2005).”
Gamma-Ray Burst Energetics and the Gamma-Ray Burst Hubble Diagram: Promises and Limitations (2003, background): “…the intrinsic diversity (i.e., the distinction between the normal-energy SNe and the so-called Branch peculiars; Branch, Fisher, & Nugent 1993), to eliminate the large fraction ( 36%; Li et al. 2001) of outliers on a sound empirical basis, and thereby increase the precision of the standard candle.”
Determining the Type, Redshift, and Age of a Supernova Spectrum (2006, background): “Such is the case of SNe 2000cx (Li et al. 2001a), 2002cx (Li et al. 2003) and 2005hk (Phillips et al. 2007).”
Cosmological Results from High-z Supernovae (2003, background): “Only exceptional cases like SN 2000cx seem to deviate greatly from the relation (Li et al. 2001b; Candia et al. 2003).”
K-Corrections and Spectral Templates of Type Ia Supernovae (2007, methodology): “For the peculiar spectra, we chose a relative weight of one-fifth, which reasonably characterizes the intrinsic fraction of peculiar supernovae in the SN Ia population (Branch 2001; Li et al. 2001).”
High-Redshift Supernova Rates (2004, background): “The SNe are distributed within these three distributions so that 20% are ’bright’, 64% are ’normal’, and the remaining 16% are ’dim’ (Li et al. 2001).”
Type Ia Supernova Explosion: Gravitationally Confined Detonation (2004, result): “We expect a similar level of variation in the resulting spectra and luminosities, in agreement with degree of diversity present in the observations (Li et al. 2001).”
The Hubble Higher z Supernova Search: Supernovae to z ≈ 1.6 and Constraints on Type Ia Progenitor Models (2004, methodology): “This would be consistent with the observed luminosity diversity at z 0, and, assuming some simple evolutionary arguments, could account for the apparent lack of diversity at higher redshifts (Livio 2001; Li et al. 2001).”
A NEW CLASS OF LUMINOUS TRANSIENTS AND A FIRST CENSUS OF THEIR MASSIVE STELLAR PROGENITORS (2008, methodology): “M85 The optical transient in the Virgo galaxy M85 (NGC 4382) was discovered in early 2006 by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search Team (KAIT; Li et al. 2001) and discussed in Kulkarni et al. (2007) and Pastorello et al. (2007) and may also be a member of the class defined by SN 2008S and NGC 300.”
The Unique Type Ia Supernova 2000cx in NGC 524 (2001, background): “…of SNe Ia at high and low redshifts (e.g., Riess et al. 1998a, 2000; Coil et al. 2000), there is also some evidence for differences between SNe Ia at different redshifts (e.g., Riess et al. 1999; Falco et al. 1999; Aldering, Knop, & Nugent 2000; Howell, Wang, & Wheeler 2000; Li et al. 2001).”
The Luminosity of SN 1999by in NGC 2841 and the Nature of “Peculiar” Type Ia Supernovae (2001, background): “Li et al. (2001) added SN 1999aa as a peculiar subclass, which is similar to SN 1991T, well before maximum light but with significant Ca ii absorption not seen in the original.”
RESULTS OF THE LICK OBSERVATORY SUPERNOVA SEARCH FOLLOW-UP PHOTOMETRY PROGRAM: BVRI LIGHT CURVES OF 165 TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2010, unknown): “We try not to discriminate between SN Ia subclasses; however, our final sample of 165 most certainly suffers from observational bias and does not reflect the true demographics of SNe Ia (e.g., Li et al. 2001a, 2001b).”
Observational and Physical Classification of Supernovae (2016, unknown): “The prototype of this class of unusual events was pointed out by Filippenko et al. (1992a) as an unusual SN with a distinctive pre-peak spectrum dominated by Fe III lines (Ruiz-Lapuente et al. 1992; Mazzali et al. 1995) that later evolves to resemble normal SNe Ia, as well as being more luminous (by”
SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR MASS MODELS FOR SUPERNOVAE (2010, background): “In this sense, the early spectral evolution of these models resembles the class of SN 1999aa-like supernovae (Li et al. 2001), which appear to be intermediate between the normal and spectroscopically peculiar SNe Ia.”
SN 2002cx: The Most Peculiar Known Type Ia Supernova (2003, methodology): “SN 1999aa–like objects (Li et al. 2001a) are similar to the SN 1991T–like ones, but with significant Caii H and K absorption lines in their premaximum spectra.”